BPA Wrecks Sex, Fouls Food -- And Probably Worse

When people ask whether modern synthetics are damaging their health and endangering future generations, Topic A is nearly always bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen, an integral component of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins and one of the highest volume industrial chemicals in existence.

Now a ground-breaking study released in the journal of Human Reproduction offers what its authors call "the first evidence that exposure to BPA in the workplace could have an adverse effect on male sexual dysfunction."

The scientific team, underwritten by Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, CA., spent five years studying 634 Chinese factory workers whose bodies had been severely contaminated with BPA.

Animal studies link BPA to an extraordinary array of subtle but serious chronic health problems, including impairment of the ability to think and behave normally, reproductive and cardiovascular system damage, cancer, diabetes, asthma and obesity. Evidence of BPA's impact on human health has been more elusive, which is why the Kaiser Permanente study is making headlines around the globe.

After a year of being bombarded with BPA, the Chinese workers reported disturbing sexual problems: four times as much erectile dysfunction and seven times as many ejaculation difficulties as a control group, the Kaiser team found.

Most people don't experience BPA exposure nearly as intense as the factory workers. But nearly all Americans test positive for low-level BPA contamination, as evidenced by body burden testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Working Group and other academic and non-profit organizations.

As Kaiser research team leader De-Kun Li, MD, Ph.D., put it, the China workers study "raises the question: Is there a safe level for BPA exposure, and what is that level?"

Many scientists specializing in hormonal and reproductive systems say there's no such thing as a "safe" dose of BPA, a powerful endocrine-disrupting chemical. Earlier this week, the American Medical Association Board of Delegates resolved to work with the federal government to minimize the public's exposure to BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The measure was proposed by the Endocrine Society, which, with 14,000 hormone researchers and medical specialists in more than 100 countries, recently warned that "even infinitesimally low levels of exposure [to endocrine-disrupting chemicals] -- indeed, any level of exposure at all -- may cause endocrine or reproductive abnormalities, particularly if exposure occurs during a critical developmental window. Surprisingly, low doses may even exert more potent effects than higher doses."

"The AMA represents a very important constituency of physicians who have a lot of credibility and clout," says Andrea Gore, Ph.D., a University of Texas-Austin researcher who co-authored the Endocrine Society statement. "If members of the AMA can now get behind the statement and actually affect regulations, then I think we can consider it a victory."

Most of the BPA in Americans' bodies is believed to come as a result of leaching from BPA-based epoxy food can linings and polycarbonate baby and drink bottles, sippy cups and other food containers. Under pressure from EWG and other scientific and environmental health groups, the federal Food and Drug Administration is weighing proposals to ban the chemical in food packaging.

Because of FDA inaction, last October EWG president Ken Cook wrote major infant formula and canned food producers urging them to take voluntary measures to remove BPA from their can linings.

Laboratory tests commissioned by EWG in 2007 found BPA in 20 out of 28 brands of canned food and drink, including B&M, Bush's Best, Campbell's Condensed (soup), Campbell's Chunky, Campbell's SpaghettiOs, Chef Boyardee, Chicken of the Sea, Coca-Cola, Del Monte, Dole, Ensure, Green Giant, Kroger store brand, Libby's, Nestle Carnation, Pepsi-Cola, Progresso, S&W, Slim-Fast, Swanson and Wolfgang Puck.

An EWG survey found that all four leading makers of liquid infant formula sold in North America used BPA to line their cans. These included Nestle (Good Start), Ross-Abbot (Similac and Isomil), MeadJohnson (Enfamil), and PBM (maker of store-brand formulas sold at Target, Kroger and dozens of other retailers).

Last week, Consumers Union, an advocacy organization, reported that its laboratory tests had found BPA in canned food packaged under the brand names Campbell's Condensed, Progresso, Del Monte and Nestle.

The FDA's plans are, as yet, unclear. But other top administration scientists and regulators are zeroing in on BPA. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has identified BPA as a priority for regulatory action. And Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, has recently committed $30 million in federal stimulus funds to research the many unanswered questions about BPA.

We know this much: With every day that passes, the cases against BPA hardens, like the plastics it makes.

Check out Environmental Working Group's guide to low-BPA infant formula.

 

Comments

[beyondliberal]

It has been readily apparent to me for several years that the sharp rise in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is due to BPA. I began to see the acceleration after about 1982.
As a professional who diagnosed these disorders, the switch from opaque plastic baby bottles, sippy cups, toys and teethers to those containing BPA found more and more children coming through my office doors. Not only were they greater in numbers, they were much younger than patients seen in prior years. More than 90% were liquid formula-fed. The babies whose moms used powdered formula or breast milk were diagnosed with milder cases.
Unfortunately, I didn't collaborate with endocrinologists or biochemists to get absolute proof, and I retired several years ago and I no longer have access to the confidential medical records which would be essential toward proving my case.
I will be very glad to see this proven with replicable, valid research. Perhaps, armed with unarguable data, we will be able to lower the incidence of new cases of ASD in the USA.
In the meantime, it's essential consumers insist manufacturers return to producing glass baby bottles, avoid clear plastics, and find a different sealant for food cans.

[lff]

Couldn't breast feeding and autism rates be correlated fairly easily? I would expect it has already been done and a positive correlation published if it existed. The media would love this so I can't imagine those kind of results would not be widely known - even by the general public.

lff

[TMc73]

"Because of FDA inaction, last October EWG president Ken Cook wrote major infant formula and canned food producers urging them to take voluntary measures to remove BPA from their can linings."

As usual, here in America the citizens have to rely (are at the mercy of) corporations who have a far greater influenece in our Federal Government than health policy experts and scientists. For consumers, to force change in the market place can take years if it happens at all which is why the FDA needs to act quicker and more decisivley when it comes to issues such as BPA.

Of course there are thousands of lobbyists who will tell the FDA that there is nothing wrong with their product, even when years of studies from abroad and here in the U.S. have shown otherwise. This is yet another example that we need vast and sweeping reforms regarding lobbyists and their undue influence on policy.

While other nations (Canada for example) have not only recognized the dangers of BPA years ago, they acted quickly to reduce or remove the use of BPA in the food stream / packaging industry at the behest of their citizens.

Articles like this make it clear that it is always better to eat as close to begining of the food stream as possible; more fresh fruits and veg, less packaging and processed foods, etc...

[roudy]

Look at the bright side here. This may be the fix to the greatest problem we face on earth, overpopulation. The more males with dysfunction the better.

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

Very funny, Roudy, and the Darwin principle may apply, too.

Take a look at some very highly regarded studies, like the Yale study of BPA-induced damage on the brains of monkeys and rats. Here's a link to my piece about it -- http://www.enviroblog.org/2008/09/bpa-what-fda-doesnt-know-could-hurt-you.html. And you don't have to listen to me -- read the Yale presser, here: http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5978&s=t
What the study found was that BPA, at the level to which people are routinely exposed in everyday life, scrambles monkey brains and undermines their ability to think straight.

So if you consider the brain the primary sex organ, BPA is bad for thinking as well as for sex.

We're skipping the double bath tubs and skipping the canned soup.

[SonofLiberty1]

Are any plastics safe?

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

Good question, but I don't think there's an answer. There are now tens of thousands of chemicals in production that have undergone little or no testing. In the case of BPA, it was tested, years ago, but scientists who have studied it recently say that the old tests didn't pick up its subtle endocrine-­disrupting properties.

[LarryMatt]

We have known that BPA was dangerous since the 1940's immediately after it was discovered. 93% of all Americans test positive for BPA in their blood system. We have known of the dangers for women for over 2 decades. Maybe now that we learn a direct connection to a male getting a rise, we may see movement by the FDA or Congress.

To learn a great deal about how our government works and how the same lobbyist that held off the regulation of tobacco for so many years, I would recommend that you read David Case's article at Fast Company.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-real-story-on-bpa.html?page=0%2C0

We know that BPA causes endocrine changes based upon its synthetic estrogen link. There are other products that consumer are drinking in bulk that causes problems for men. Lots of men are discovering that those breasts they are growing is a result of soy milk. Please read about this development as well.

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

The history is very interesting, British biochemist Edward Charles Dodds described BPA as synthetic estrogen in 1936 in the journal Nature. Also in late 1930s, a Swiss inventor named Pierre Castan was credited with inventing epoxy resin for use as a dental bonding material. Castan discoverd that bisphenol A made the material very hard and adhesive. Yet scientists in the various disciplines -- materials science and reproductive biology -- seemed never to have stepped back to consider the implications of using a sex hormone in a synthetic that would become ubiquitous.Of course, it seems that only recently, scientists have realized the extent to which epoxy resin and polycarbonate plastic become destabilized and leach BPA molecules into whatever food the plastic is wrapped around.

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

And about soy -- there is some interesting new research on soy as an estrogenic chemical. Retha Newbold, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has done important work in this field. You can read a good piece on a recent study by her team at: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/estrogenic-effects-of-soy

[RMankovitz]

While the link between BPA and impotence is a serious issue, the link between chemicals from the plastics industry and the disappearance of human males is really troubling. Below is a description of, and a link to a documentary on this issue. Note: you might find this documentary to be very disturbing and incredibly sad.

The Disappearing Male is a CBC documentary about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system. The last few decades have seen steady and dramatic increases in the incidence of boys and young men suffering from genital deformities, low sperm count, sperm abnormalities and testicular cancer. At the same time, boys are now far more at risk of suffering from ADHD, autism, Tourette's syndrome, cerebral palsy, and dyslexia. The Disappearing Male takes a close and disturbing look at what many doctors and researchers now suspect are responsible for many of these problems: a class of common chemicals that are ubiquitous in our world. Found in everything from shampoo, sunglasses, meat and dairy products, carpet, cosmetics and baby bottles, they are called "hormone mimicking" or "endocrine disrupting" chemicals and they may be starting to damage the most basic building blocks of human development. See:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7530701744597358451&ei=ndU-Sc-KFZ-QiQL369XeBQ&q=the+disappearing+male#

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

And check out the Potomac Conservancy's report on intersex fish at this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111118805.html

[rbryanh]

Chemicals which disrupt human reproduction are the very last pollutants we should worry about.

[Elaine Shannon - Huffpost Blogger]

BPA has also been shown in animal studies to disrupt the brain's production of synapses. In other words, it undermines the animal's capacity to think.

[lff]

Care to provide some references to the studies so we can see how many tons of BPA those poor mice had to eat before they showed any decrease in synampse production.

lff